Deadline: 18-Jun-25
The Innovate UK is seeking applications for its Contracts for Innovation to scaling community initiatives in diet and exercise.
The aim of the competition is to fund social enterprises with the ability to scale and deliver social impact. Your proposal must address the delivery of community based diet and (or) exercise initiatives and your existing innovation must require further testing and R&D.
In this phase 3 competition you must further develop your existing pre-commercial innovation, deploying, testing and iterating in a real world or representative environment. You must work closely with potential users and customers, conducting the R&D to progress your project toward commercialization.
Specific Themes
- Your project can focus on one of the following community based initiatives for:
- diet
- exercise
- combined diet and exercise
Funding Information
- A total of up to £1.8 million inclusive of VAT, is allocated to this competition.
- Contracts will be up to £250,000, inclusive of VAT, for each project for up to 12 months. They expect to fund up to six projects.
Eligibility Criteria
- To lead a project, you can:
- be an organisation of any size
- work alone or with the subcontracted skills and expertise of others from business, research organisations, research and technology organisations, or the third sector (charities, social enterprises and voluntary groups)
- As an organisation you must:
- be a social enterprise and exist to provide benefits for society
- have a stated commitment to social outcomes and identified beneficiaries related to your social mission
- have objects in your constitutional documents that protect your social mission
- have a policy to distribute a portion of profits after tax, or be open to including one, so any surpluses are used to achieve positive social impacts in the long term
Ineligibility Criteria
- They will not fund projects that:
- are not original in scope and duplicates someone else’s work
- do not have an existing lead customer
- do not have at least one additional new customer engaged
- do not plan to scale by at least 25% of your existing baseline of product, process or service
- do not demonstrate spending 80% of their requested funding by 31 March 2026
- do not have a strong social impact, focus or purpose
- do not address one of the three themes
- include clinical trials, clinical studies, or fundamental research
- require regulatory approval
- do not further develop or undertake R&D of existing innovations
- do not involve the development of an innovation element to enhance impact
- do not involve the commercial viability of an existing service following an initial pilot
For more information, visit GOV.UK.
